Of German ancestry, John Helmcken's father and mother ran the White Swan Pub
on Alie Street in the early-mid nineteenth century. Helmcken grew up there,
attended St George's German and English School from the age of four, and
latterly recorded his memories, which were edited and published by Dorothy
Blackey-Smith in 1975 under the title 'The reminiscences of Doctor John
Sebastian Helmcken'. Below is an extract relating to the church and school:

"In Little Alie Street stood St George's German Church and School - the former
old fashioned, with galleries on each side and above in the corners; a
complete church with the Revd. Dr. Schwabe as Minister. The school was an
ordinary schoolroom, with a stove in the centre and plenty light. A graveyard
existed immediately at the back of the school and hardly separated from it,
save by a diminutive fence. Sunflowers and others grew in it and somehow or
other the boys considered it sacred and seldom played there at all. The bricks
of the school were furrowed, by the boys sharpening their slate pencils there.
The church was heated by a furnace fed from the outside; hot air passing into
the church...

I suppose I was like other little boys full of mischief, and so sent to a
girls' school kept by an old Miss Somebody...However I was soon turned out of
or taken away from the girls' school and sent to St George's German and
English School, Vorweg the Master being a friend of my mother. So having
dressed - made decent and my hair brushed, I set to crying, but this did not
hinder my going. Father took me there and left me to cry in the schoolroom all
day. After a short time I got used to the discipline and used to go off with
alacrity at 9 o'clock in the morning and remain at school until 5 in the
afternoon. As schools go now, this would be considered a very poor school
indeed, as we were only drilled in English and German, Writing and Arithmetic
and Geography. The school was partly supported by subscriptions, chiefly from
the Germans - the cost to a scholar being I think about ten shillings per
quarter plus books and so forth. There were about eighty boys of all sizes and
grades...

It was the prescribed duty of certain boys to wind up the church clock once a
week - it had a winch. No boy ever went alone! As several went usually
together, nice romps we had occasionally in the church, but for all this we
felt uncanny in the place, particularly as in the vaults under the entrance to
the church, lay buried, some of the enlightened pillars of the church and
perhaps ministers etc. I never saw these vaults opened but once - someone had
to be buried. A huge flagstone covering the vault had been removed, and
descending into the dismal cavern, one saw tiers of leaden coffins, some
encased with wood, others where it had rotted off. I did not stop there long -
a lantern shed a dismal light - and the air felt cold and I shuddery.

We all were expected to be in church twice every Sunday - and had benches
fronting the altar and the Clerk, who was Vorweg our schoolmaster. Of course
we could all sing and so were a sort of choir. During Lent the church was
draped in black - pulpit, reading desk and all - and then we had to go to
church twice in the week also. At Christmas it was bedecked with rosemary,
holly and laurustinus. The services were all in German - the congregation
Germans - chiefly from Hanover, at all events Low Germany and comprised among
others many German merchants from the City and surroundings."